Modern descendants of the Polovtsy - Karachays and Balkars? Polovtsy who are they? Who are the Polovtsy really
The formation of the Polovtsian ethnos took place according to the same patterns for all the peoples of the Middle Ages and antiquity. One of them is that the people that gave the name to the entire conglomerate are far from always the most numerous in it - due to objective or subjective factors, it is promoted to the leading place in the emerging ethnic array, becomes its core. Polovtsy did not come to an empty place. The first component that joined the new ethnic community here was the population that had previously been part of the Khazar Khaganate - the Bulgarians and Alans. The remnants of the Pecheneg and Guz hordes played a more significant role. This is confirmed by the fact that, firstly, according to anthropology, outwardly nomads of the 10th-13th centuries almost did not differ from the inhabitants of the steppes of the 8th - early 10th centuries, and secondly, an unusual variety of funeral rites is recorded in this territory. . A custom that came exclusively with the Polovtsy was the erection of sanctuaries dedicated to the cult of male or female ancestors. Thus, from the end of the 10th century, a mixture of three kindred peoples took place in this region, a single Turkic-speaking community was formed, but the process was interrupted by the Mongol invasion.
Polovtsy - nomads
The Polovtsians were a classic nomadic pastoral people. The herds included cattle, sheep, and even camels, but the main wealth of the nomad was the horse. Initially, they led a year-round so-called camp nomadism: finding a place rich in food for livestock, they located their dwellings there, but when the food was depleted, they set off in search of a new territory. At first, the steppe could painlessly provide for everyone. However, as a result of demographic growth, the transition to a more rational management of the economy - seasonal nomadism - has become an urgent task. It implies a clear division of pastures into winter and summer, folding territories and routes assigned to each group.
Polovtsian silver bowl with one handle. Kyiv, X-XIII centuries Dea / A. Dagli Orti / Getty Images Dynastic marriages
Dynastic marriages have always been a tool of diplomacy. The Polovtsians were no exception here. However, relations were not based on parity - the Russian princes willingly married the daughters of the Polovtsian princes, but did not send their relatives in marriage. An unwritten medieval law worked here: representatives of the ruling dynasty could only be married to an equal. It is characteristic that the same Svyatopolk married the daughter of Tugorkan, having suffered a crushing defeat from him, that is, being in a deliberately weaker position. However, he did not give his daughter or sister, but he took the girl from the steppe. Thus, the Polovtsians were recognized as an influential, but not equal force.
But if the baptism of the future wife seemed to be even pleasing to God, then the “betrayal” of their faith was not possible, which is why the Polovtsian rulers failed to get the daughters of Russian princes to marry. Only one case is known when a Russian princess (the widowed mother of Svyatoslav Vladimirovich) married a Polovtsian prince - however, for this she had to run away from home.
Be that as it may, by the time of the Mongol invasion, the Russian and Polovtsian aristocracies were closely intertwined with family ties, the cultures of both peoples were mutually enriched.
The Polovtsians were a tool in internecine strife
The Polovtsians were not the first dangerous neighbor of Russia - the threat from the steppe has always accompanied the life of the country. But unlike the Pechenegs, these nomads met not with a single state, but with a group of principalities at war with each other. At first, the Polovtsian hordes did not seek to conquer Russia, being satisfied with small raids. Only when in 1068 the combined forces of the three princes were defeated on the Lta (Alta) river, did the power of the new nomadic neighbor become apparent. But the danger was not realized by the rulers - the Polovtsy, always ready for war and robbery, began to be used in the fight against each other. Oleg Svyatoslavich was the first to do this in 1078, bringing the "nasty" to fight Vsevolod Yaroslavich. In the future, he repeatedly repeated this "reception" in the internecine struggle, for which he was named the author of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" Oleg Gorislavich.
But the contradictions between the Russian and Polovtsian princes did not always allow them to unite. Vladimir Monomakh fought especially actively with the established tradition. In 1103, the Dolobsky Congress took place, at which Vladimir managed to organize the first expedition to the territory of the enemy. The result was the defeat of the Polovtsian army, which lost not only ordinary soldiers, but also twenty representatives of the highest nobility. The continuation of this policy led to the fact that the Polovtsians were forced to migrate away from the borders of Russia.
The soldiers of Prince Igor Svyatoslavich capture the Polovtsian towers. Miniature from the Radziwill chronicle. 15th century vk.com
After the death of Vladimir Monomakh, the princes again began to bring the Polovtsy to fight each other, weakening the military and economic potential of the country. In the second half of the century, there was another surge of active confrontation, which was led by Prince Konchak in the steppe. It was to him that Igor Svyatoslavich was captured in 1185, as described in the Tale of Igor's Campaign. In the 1190s, raids became less and less, and at the beginning of the 13th century, the military activity of the steppe neighbors also subsided.
Further development of relations was interrupted by the Mongols who came. The southern regions of Russia were endlessly subjected not only to raids, but also to the "drives" of the Polovtsy, which devastated these lands. After all, even just the movement of the army of nomads (and there were cases when they went here with the whole economy) destroyed crops, the military threat forced merchants to choose other paths. Thus, this people contributed a lot to the shift of the center of the country's historical development.
Polovtsian anthropomorphic statue from the collection of the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum A female stele holds a vessel. Drawing by S. A. Pletneva "Polovtsian stone statues", 1974 The Polovtsy were friends not only with the Russians, but also with the Georgians
The Polovtsians were noted for their active participation in history not only in Russia. Expelled by Vladimir Monomakh from the Seversky Donets, they partially migrated to Ciscaucasia under the leadership of Prince Atrak. Here, Georgia turned to them for help, constantly being raided from the mountainous regions of the Caucasus. Atrak willingly entered the service of King David and even intermarried with him, giving his daughter in marriage. He brought with him not the entire horde, but only part of it, which then remained in Georgia.
From the beginning of the XII century, the Polovtsy actively penetrated the territory of Bulgaria, which was then under the rule of Byzantium. Here they were engaged in cattle breeding or tried to enter the service of the empire. Apparently, they include Peter and Ivan Aseni, who raised an uprising against Constantinople. With the tangible support of the Cuman detachments, they managed to defeat Byzantium, in 1187 the Second Bulgarian Kingdom was founded, headed by Peter.
At the beginning of the 13th century, the influx of Polovtsy into the country intensified, and the eastern branch of the ethnic group already participated in it, bringing with it the tradition of stone sculptures. Here, however, they quickly became Christianized, and then disappeared among the local population. For Bulgaria, this was not the first experience of "digesting" the Turkic people. The Mongol invasion "pushed" the Polovtsians to the west, gradually, from 1228, they moved to Hungary. In 1237, the recently powerful prince Kotyan turned to the Hungarian king Bela IV. The Hungarian leadership agreed to provide the eastern outskirts of the state, knowing about the strength of the impending army of Batu.
The Polovtsy wandered in the territories allotted to them, causing discontent among the neighboring principalities, which were subjected to periodic robberies. Bela's heir, Stefan, married one of Kotyan's daughters, but then, under the pretext of treason, executed his father-in-law. This led to the first uprising of freedom-loving settlers. The next rebellion of the Polovtsians was caused by an attempt to force them to Christianize. Only in the 14th century did they completely settle down, became Catholics and began to dissolve, although they still retained their military specificity and even in the 19th century they still remembered the prayer “Our Father” in their native language.
We do not know anything about whether the Polovtsy had a written language
Our knowledge of the Polovtsy is rather limited due to the fact that this people has not created their own written sources. We can see a huge number of stone sculptures, but we will not find any inscriptions there. We draw information about this people from its neighbors. Standing apart is the 164-page notebook of a missionary-translator of the late 13th - early 14th century Alfabetum Persicum, Comanicum et Latinum Anonymi..., better known as the Codex Cumanicus. The time of the appearance of the monument is determined by the period from 1303 to 1362, the place of writing is the Crimean city of Kafu (Feodosia). By origin, content, graphic and linguistic features, the dictionary is divided into two parts, Italian and German. The first is written in three columns: Latin words, their translation into Persian and Polovtsian. The German part contains dictionaries, grammar notes, Polovtsian riddles and Christian texts. The Italian component is more significant for historians, since it reflected the economic needs of communication with the Polovtsy. In it we find such words as "bazaar", "merchant", "changer", "price", "coin", listing goods and crafts. In addition, it contains words that characterize a person, city, nature. The list of Polovtsian titles is of great importance.
Although, apparently, the manuscript was partially rewritten from an earlier original, was not created at once, which is why it is not a “cut” of reality, but still allows us to understand what the Polovtsy were doing, what goods they were interested in, we can see their borrowing of Old Russian words and, most importantly, to reconstruct the hierarchy of their society.
Polovtsian women
A specific feature of the Polovtsian culture was the stone statues of ancestors, which are called stone or Polovtsian women. This name appeared because of the underlined chest, always hanging on the stomach, which obviously carried a symbolic meaning - feeding the family. Moreover, a rather significant percentage of male statues was recorded, in which a mustache or even a beard is depicted, and at the same time there is a chest identical to that of a woman.
The 12th century is the period of the heyday of the Polovtsian culture and the mass production of stone statues, there are also faces in which there is a noticeable desire for portrait resemblance. The manufacture of idols from stone was expensive, and less wealthy representatives of society could only afford wooden figures, which, unfortunately, have not come down to us. They placed statues on the tops of mounds or hills in square or rectangular shrines made of flagstone. Most often they placed male and female statues - the ancestors of the kosh - facing east, but there were also sanctuaries with a cluster of figures. At their foot, archaeologists found the bones of rams, once they discovered the remains of a child. Obviously, the cult of ancestors played a significant role in the life of the Polovtsians. For us, the importance of this feature of their culture is that it allows us to clearly determine where the people roamed.
Earrings of the Polovtsian type. Yasinovataya, Donetsk region. Second half of the 12th - 13th century From the article by O. Ya. Privalova “Rich nomadic burials from the Donbass”. "Archaeological Almanac". No. 7, 1988 Attitude towards women
In Polovtsian society, women enjoyed considerable freedom, although they had a significant part of the household duties. There is a clear gender division of activities both in the craft and in cattle breeding: women were in charge of goats, sheep and cows, men were in charge of horses and camels. During military campaigns, all the worries for the defense and economic activities of nomads were thrown onto the shoulders of the weaker sex. Perhaps sometimes they had to become the head of the kosh. At least two female burials were found with wands made of precious metals, which were symbols of the leader of a larger or smaller association. At the same time, women did not remain aloof from military affairs. In the era of military democracy, girls took part in general campaigns, the defense of the nomad camp during the absence of her husband also assumed the presence of military skills. A stone statue of a heroic girl has come down to us. The size of the statue is one and a half to two times the common one, the chest is “tightened”, unlike the traditional image, it is covered with elements of armor. She is armed with a saber, a dagger, and a quiver for arrows; nevertheless, her headdress is undoubtedly feminine. This type of female warriors is reflected in Russian epics under the name of Polanits.
Where did the Polovtsy go?
No nation disappears without a trace. History knows no cases of complete physical extermination of the population by alien invaders. The Polovtsians have not gone anywhere either. Partly they went to the Danube and even ended up in Egypt, but the bulk of them remained in their native steppes. For at least a hundred years they retained their customs, albeit in a modified form. Apparently, the Mongols forbade the creation of new sanctuaries dedicated to the Polovtsian warriors, which led to the appearance of "pit" places of worship. In a hill or mound, recesses were dug out, not visible from afar, inside which the pattern of placement of statues, traditional for the previous period, was repeated.
But even with the cessation of the existence of this custom, the Polovtsy did not disappear. The Mongols came to the Russian steppes with their families, and did not move as a whole tribe. And the same process took place with them as with the Polovtsians centuries earlier: after giving a name to the new people, they themselves dissolved in it, having adopted its language and culture. Thus, the Mongols became a bridge from the modern peoples of Russia to the Polovtsians of the summer.
Many historians studying the history of Russia often write about the internecine wars of the princes and their relations with the Polovtsy, a people with many ethnonyms: Kipchaks, Kypchaks, Polovtsy, Cumans. More often they talk about the cruelty of that time, but very rarely touch on the question of the origin of the Polovtsy.
It would be very interesting to know and answer such questions as: where did they come from?; how did they interact with other tribes?; what kind of life did they lead?; what was the reason for their resettlement to the West and was it connected with natural conditions?; how did they coexist with the Russian princes?; why have historians written so negatively about them?; how did they disperse?; Are there any descendants of this interesting people among us? These questions should certainly be answered by the works of orientalists, Russian historians, ethnographers, on which we will rely.
In the 8th century, almost during the existence of the Great Turkic Khaganate (Great El), a new ethnic group, the Kypchaks, was formed in the Central and Eastern parts of modern Kazakhstan. The Kipchaks, who came from the homeland of all the Turks - from the western slopes of the Altai - united the Karluks, Kyrgyz, Kimaks under their rule. All of them received the ethnonym of their new owners. In the 11th century, the Kypchaks gradually move towards the Syr Darya, where the Oghuz roam. Fleeing from the warlike Kipchaks, they move to the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. Almost the entire territory of modern Kazakhstan becomes the domain of the Kipchaks, which is called the Kypchak Steppe (Dasht-i-Kipchak).
The Kypchaks began to move to the West, practically for the same reason as once the Huns, who began to suffer defeats from the Chinese and Xianbeis only because a terrible drought began in the eastern steppe, which disrupted the favorable development of the Xiongnu state, created by the great Shanyu Mode . Relocation to the western steppes was not so easy, as there were constant clashes with the Oguzes and Pechenegs (Kangls). However, the resettlement of the Kipchaks was favorably influenced by the fact that the Khazar Khaganate, as such, no longer existed, because before that, the rise in the level of the Caspian flooded many settlements of the Khazars who settled on the shores of the Caspian Sea, which clearly battered their economy. The end of this state was the defeat of the cavalry Prince Svyatoslav Igorevich. The Kypchaks crossed the Volga and advanced to the mouth of the Danube. It was at this time that the Kypchaks appeared such ethnonyms as Cumans and Polovtsy. The Byzantines called them Cumans. And the Polovtsy, the Kypchaks began to be called in Russia.
Let's look at the ethnonym "Polovtsy", because it is around this name of the ethnic group (ethnonym) that there is so much controversy, since there are a lot of versions. We highlight the main ones:
So, the first version. The ethnonym "Polovtsy", according to nomads, came from "polov", that is, it is straw. Modern historians judge by this name that the Kipchaks were fair-haired, and maybe even blue-eyed. Probably, the Polovtsy were Caucasoid, and it was not for nothing that our Russian princes, who came to the Polovtsian kurens, often admired the beauty of the Polovtsian girls, calling them "Polovtsian red girls." But there is one more statement, according to which we can say that the Kypchaks were a Caucasoid ethnic group. I turn to Lev Gumilyov: “Our ancestors were friends with the Polovtsian khans, married “red Polovtsian girls, (there are suggestions that Alexander Nevskiy was the son of a Polovtsy), they accepted the baptized Polovtsy into their environment, and the descendants of the latter became Zaporizhzhya and Sloboda Cossacks, replacing the traditional Slavic suffix "ov" (Ivanov) with the Turkic "enko" (Ivanenko).
The next version is somewhat similar to the version above. The Kypchaks were the descendants of the Sary-Kypchaks, that is, those same Kypchaks that formed in Altai. And "sary" is translated from ancient Turkic as "yellow". In Old Russian, “polov” means “yellow”. It may be from the horse's suit. The Polovtsy could be called that because they rode sex horses. Versions, as you can see, diverge.
The first mention of the Polovtsy in Russian chronicles comes down to 1055. Historians such as N. M. Karmzin, S. M. Solovyov, V. O. Klyuchevsky, N. I. Kostomarov they considered the Kypchaks to be terrible terrible barbarians, who badly battered Russia. But as Gumilyov said about Kostomarov, that: “it’s more pleasant to blame your neighbor for your own troubles than yourself”.
Russian princes often fought among themselves with such cruelty that one could mistake them for yard dogs who did not share a piece of meat. Moreover, these bloody civil strife occurred very often and they were more terrible than some small attacks of nomads, for example, on the Principality of Pereyaslavl. And here everything is not as simple as it seems. After all, the princes used the Polovtsians as mercenaries in wars among themselves. Then our historians began to talk about the fact that Russia allegedly endured the struggle with the Polovtsian hordes and defended Europe, like a shield from a formidable saber. In short, our compatriots had plenty of fantasies, but they never came to the point.
It is interesting that Russia defended the Europeans from the "evil barbarian nomads", and after that Lithuania, Poland, Swabian Germany, Hungary began to move to the East, that is, to Russia, to their "defenders". It was painfully necessary for us to protect the Europeans, and there was no protection at all. Russia, despite its fragmentation, was much stronger than the Polovtsy, and those opinions of the historians listed above are unfounded. So we did not protect anyone from the nomads and have never been a “shield of Europe”, but rather were even a “shield from Europe”.
Let us return to the relations of Russia with the Polovtsians. We know that the two dynasties, the Olgovichi and the Monomashichi, became irreconcilable enemies, and the chroniclers, in particular, lean towards the side of the Monomashichi, as heroes of the struggle against the steppes. However, let's look at this problem objectively. As we know, Vladimir Monomakh concluded “19 worlds” with the Polovtsy, although you can’t call him a “peacemaker prince”. In 1095, he treacherously killed the Polovtsian khans, who agreed to end the war - Itlar And Kitana. Then the prince of Kyiv demanded that the prince of Chernigov Oleg Svyatoslavich
either he gave his son Itlar, or he himself would have killed him. But Oleg, a future good friend of the Polovtsy, refused Vladimir.
Of course, Oleg had enough sins, but still, what could be more disgusting than betrayal? It was from that moment that the confrontation between these two dynasties began - the Olgovichi and the Monomashichi.
Vladimir Monomakh was able to make a number of campaigns against the Polovtsian nomad camps and forced out part of the Kypchaks beyond the Don. This part began to serve the Georgian king. The Kypchaks did not lose their Turkic prowess. They stopped the onslaught of the Seljuk Turks on Kavakaz. By the way, when the Seljuks captured the Polovtsian kurens, they took physically developed boys and then sold them to the Egyptian sultan, who raised them as elite fighters of the caliphate - the Mamluks. In addition to the descendants of the Kipchaks, the descendants of the Circassians, who were also Mamluks, served the Sultan in the Egyptian Caliphate. However, they were completely different units. The Polovtsian Mamluks were called al-Bahr or Bahrits, and Circassian Mamluks al-Burj. Later, these Mamluks, namely the Bahrits (descendants of the Cumans) seized power in Egypt under the leadership of Baibars and Kutuza, and then they will be able to repel the attacks of the Mongols of Kitbugi-noyon (the state of the Khulaguids)
We return to those Polovtsians who nevertheless managed to stay in the North Caucasian steppes, in the northern Black Sea region. In the 1190s, the Polovtsian nobility partly accepted Christianity. In 1223, the commanders of the Mongol army in two tumens (20 thousand people), Jebe And subday, made a sudden raid in the rear of the Polovtsy, bypassing the Caucasus Range. In this regard, the Polovtsy asked for help in Russia, and the princes decided to help them. It is interesting that, according to many historians who had a negative attitude towards the steppes, if the Polovtsy are the eternal enemies of Russia, then how will they explain such a quick, almost allied, help from the Russian princes? However, as you know, the joint troops of the Russians and the Polovtsians were defeated, and not because of, for example, the superiority of the enemy, which was not there, but because of their disorganization (there were 80 thousand Russians with the Polovtsy, and only 20 thousand Mongols. pers.). Then followed the complete defeat of the Polovtsy from the temnik Batu. After that, the Kipchaks dispersed and practically ceased to be considered an ethnic group. Some of them dissolved in the Golden Horde, some converted to Christianity and later entered the Moscow principality, some, as we said, began to rule in Mamluk Egypt, and some went to Europe (Hungary, Bulgaria, Byzantium). This is where the story of the Kipchaks ends. It remains only to describe the social structure and culture of this ethnic group.
The Polovtsians had a military-democratic system, practically, like many other nomadic peoples. Their only problem was that they never submitted to a central authority. Their kurens were separate, so if they gathered a common army, then this rarely happened. Often several kurens united in a small horde, the leader of which was the khan. When some khans united, the kagan was at the head.
Khan occupied the highest position in the horde, and the word "kan" was traditionally added to the names of the Polovtsians holding this position. After him came the aristocrats, who disposed of the community members. Then the heads who led the rank and file soldiers. The lowest social position was occupied by women - servants and convicts - prisoners of war who performed the functions of slaves. As it was written above, the horde included a certain number of kurens, which consisted of aul families. A koshevoi was appointed to own a kuren (Turkic “kosh”, “koshu” - nomadic, nomadic).
“The main occupation of the Polovtsy was cattle breeding. The main food of ordinary nomads was meat, milk and millet, and koumiss was their favorite drink. The Polovtsy sewed clothes according to their own steppe patterns. Shirts, caftans and leather pants served as everyday clothes for the Polovtsy. Housework reportedly Plano Carpini And Rubruk usually done by women. The position of women among the Polovtsy was quite high. The norms of behavior of the Polovtsians were regulated by "customary law". An important place in the system of customs of the Polovtsians was occupied by blood feud.
In the majority, if we exclude the aristocracy, which began to accept Christianity, then the Polovtsy professed tengrism
. Just like the Turks, the Polovtsy revered wolf
. Of course, shamans called “bashams” also served in their society, who communicated with spirits and treated the sick. In principle, they did not differ in anything from the shamans of other nomadic peoples. The Polovtsians developed a funeral cult, as well as the cult of ancestors, which gradually grew into the cult of "hero-leaders". Over the ashes of their dead, they poured mounds and placed the famous Kipchak balbals (“stone women”), erected, as in the Turkic Khaganate, in honor of the soldiers who fell in the struggle for their land. These are wonderful monuments of material culture, reflecting the rich spiritual world of their creators.
The Polovtsians often fought, and their military affairs were in the first place. In addition to excellent bows and sabers, they also had javelins and spears. Most of the troops were light cavalry, consisting of mounted archers. Also, the army had heavily armed cavalry, whose warriors wore lamellar shells, plate shells, chain mail, and helmets. In their free time, the warriors were engaged in hunting to hone their skills.
Again, stepophobic historians claimed that the Polovtsy did not build cities, however, the cities of Sharukan, Sugrov, Cheshuev, founded by the Polovtsy, are mentioned in their lands. In addition, Sharukan (now the city of Kharkov) was the capital of the Western Cumans. According to the travel historian Rubruk, for a long time the Polovtsy owned Tmutarakan (according to another version, at that time it belonged to Byzantium). Probably, the Greek Crimean colonies paid tribute to them.
Our story about the Polovtsy ends, however, despite the fact that this article has insufficient data on this interesting ethnic group and therefore needs to be supplemented.
Alexander Belyaev, MGIMO Eurasian Integration Club (U).
Bibliography:
- 1. Gumilyov L. N. "Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe." Moscow. 2010
- 2. Gumilyov L. N. "A millennium around the Caspian". Moscow. 2009
- 3. Karamzin N. M. "History of the Russian State." St. Petersburg. 2008
- 4. Popov A.I. "Kypchaks and Russia". Leningrad. 1949
- 5. Grushevsky M. S. “Essay on the history of the Kiev land from the death of Yaroslav toXIVcentury." Kyiv. 1891
- 6. Pletneva S. A. "Polovtsi". Moscow. 1990
- 7. Golubovsky P.V. « Pechenegs, Torks and Polovtsy before the invasion of the Tatars. Kyiv. 1884
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The origin of this group of nomadic tribes has been poorly studied and there is still a lot of obscurity here. Numerous attempts to generalize the available historical, archaeological and linguistic material have not yet led to the formation of a unified view on this problem. To this day, the remark of thirty years ago by one of the experts in this field remains valid that “the creation of a (fundamental) study on the ethnic and political history of the Kipchaks from ancient times to the late Middle Ages is one of the unsolved problems of historical science” ( Kuzeev R. G. The origin of the Bashkir people. Ethnic composition, history of settlement. M., 1974. P. 168 ).
It is obvious, however, that the concepts of a people, nationality or ethnic group are inapplicable to it, for the most diverse sources indicate that behind the ethnic terms "Kipchaks", "Kumans", "Polovtsy" hides a motley conglomerate of steppe tribes and clans, in which there were originally both Turkic and Mongolian ethno-cultural components*. The largest tribal ramifications of the Kypchaks are noted in the writings of eastern authors of the 13th-14th centuries. Thus, the Encyclopedia of An-Nuwayri singles out tribes in their composition: Toxoba, Ieta, Burjoglu, Burly, Kanguoglu, Anjoglu, Durut, Karabaroglu, Juznan, Karabirkli, Kotyan (Ibn Khaldun adds that "all the listed tribes are not from the same clan") . According to Ad-Dimashka, the Kipchaks who moved to Khorezm were called tau, buzanki, bashkyrd. The Tale of Bygone Years also knows tribal associations of the Polovtsy: Turpey, Elktukovichi, and others. The Mongolian admixture among the Kuman-Kypchak tribes, fixed by archeology, was quite noticeable to contemporaries. Regarding the Toksoba tribe (“Toksobichi” of the Russian chronicles), there is Ibn-Khaldun’s testimony about his origin “from the Tatars” (in this context, the Mongols). The testimony of Ibn al-Asir is also indicative that the Mongols, wanting to split the Kipchak-Alanian union, reminded the Kipchaks: "We and you are one people and from one tribe..."
*Despite a certain ethnographic and linguistic proximity, these tribes and clans could hardly have had a single ancestry, since the differences in everyday life, religious rites and, apparently, in anthropological appearance were still very significant, which explains the discrepancy in the ethnographic descriptions of the Cumans -Kypchaks. For example, Guillaume de Rubruk (XIII century) put the burial customs of different ethnic groups under a single “Cuman” funeral rite: “Comans pour a large hill over the deceased and erect a statue of him, facing east and holding a cup in his hand in front of his navel. They also build pyramids for the rich, that is, pointed houses, and in some places I saw large towers made of bricks, in some places stone houses ... I saw one recently deceased, near whom they hung 16 horse skins on high poles, four from each sides of the world; and they set before him koumiss to drink, and meat to eat, although they said of him that he was baptized. I saw other burials in the direction to the east, namely large squares paved with stones, some round, others quadrangular, and then four long stones erected on the four sides of the world on this side of the square. He also notices that the men among the “comans” are busy with various chores: “they make bows and arrows, prepare stirrups and bridles, make saddles, build houses and carts, guard horses and milk mares, shake the koumiss itself ... make bags in which it preserve, protect also camels and pack them. Meanwhile, another Western European traveler of the XIII century. Plano Carpini, from his observations of the “comans”, got the impression that, compared to women, men “do nothing at all”, except that they have “partly the care of the herds ... hunt and practice shooting”, etc.
Moreover, there is no reliable evidence that they ever had a common self-name. “Kumans”, “Kypchaks”, “Polovtsy” - all these ethnonyms (more precisely, pseudo-ethnonyms, as we will see below) are preserved exclusively in the written monuments of neighboring peoples, and without the slightest indication that they were taken from the vocabulary of the steppe people themselves. Even the term "tribal union" does not fit the definition of this steppe community, since it lacked any unifying center - a ruling tribe, a supra-tribal governing body or a "royal" family. There were separate Kipchak khans, but there was never a khan of all Kipchaks ( Bartold V. V. History of the Turkish-Mongolian peoples. Op. M., 1968. T.V. FROM. 209 ). Therefore, we should be talking about a rather loose and amorphous tribal formation, whose formation into a special ethnic group, outlined in the second half of the 12th and early 13th centuries, was interrupted by the Mongols, after which the Kuman-Kypchak tribes served as an ethnic substrate for the formation of a number of peoples of Eastern Europe, North Caucasus, Central Asia and Western Siberia - Tatars, Bashkirs, Nogais, Karachays, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Turkmens, Uzbeks, Altaians, etc.
The first information about the "Kipchaks" dates back to the 40s. VIII century, when the Turkic Khaganate finally collapsed in the Central Asian region (the so-called Second Turkic Khaganate, restored in 687-691 on the site of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, defeated by the Chinese in 630), which could not resist the uprising of subject tribes. The winners, among whom the Uighurs played the leading role, gave the defeated Turks the contemptuous nickname "Kypchaks" *, which in Turkic meant something like "fugitives", "outcasts", "losers", "ill-fated", "ill-fated", "worthless" .
* The earliest mention of the word "Kypchak" (and, moreover, in connection with the Turks) is found precisely in the ancient Uyghur writing— on the "Selenginsky stone", a stone stele with runic (Orkhon) inscriptions, installed in the upper reaches of the river. Selengi by the ruler of the Uighur Khaganate Eletmish Bilge-Kagan (747-759). In 1909, the monument was discovered and studied by the Finnish scientist G. J. Ramstedt. The text embossed on its northern side is seriously damaged, including the fourth line, which has a gap in the initial part. Ramstedt proposed a conjecture for it: “when the Kypchak Turks ruled over us for fifty years ...” At present, this reconstruction is generally recognized, and the word “Kypchak” is usually given an ethnic meaning (“the people of the Kypchak Turks”), which is actually assumed is not necessary, since the ancient Turkic inscriptions do not know cases of merging or identification of paired ethnonyms. Taking into account the aforementioned nominal meaning of the word "Kypchak", the beginning of the line should be read: "when the despicable Turks ...".
But a politically colored term, hardly suitable for ethnic self-awareness, would hardly have been so tenacious if it had not undergone further metamorphoses - and above all, in the perception of the vanquished themselves, who, along with the tribal political structure (in the form of the Turkic Khaganate), also lost the possibility of a reliable ethnic self-identification surrounded by related Turkic-speaking tribes. It is very likely that at least in some tribal groups of the defeated Turks (forced back to the foothills of the Altai), under the influence of a catastrophic defeat that drastically changed their socio-political status, there was a radical breakdown of tribal and political self-consciousness, which resulted in their adoption of the name "Kypchak" as a new autoethnonym. Such a substitution could be facilitated by the notion of an inseparable connection between an object (being) and its name (name), which is characteristic of religious and magical thinking. The researchers note that “the Turkic and Mongolian peoples still have a once very extensive class of amulets. So, children or adults, usually after the death of a previous child or family member (clan), as well as after a serious illness or experienced mortal danger, are given a talisman name with a derogatory meaning or a new protective name, which should mislead the persecuting person (family, clan) supernatural the forces that caused the misfortune. By virtue of such ideas, for the Turks, who experienced the malice of hostile spirits*, the means of salvation could just as well be “accepting a nickname-amulet with a derogatory meaning (“ill-fated”, “worthless”), which most likely arose as a substitution of the ethnonym in ritual practice" Klyashtorny S.G., Sultanov T.I. Kazakhstan: a chronicle of three millennia. Alma-Ata, 1992. From. 120-126 ).
* In the legends of the Seyanto tribe, which at one time also suffered a heavy defeat from the Uighurs, the victory of the latter is directly explained by the intervention of supernatural forces: “Before the Seyanto were destroyed, someone asked for food in their tribe. They took the guest to the yurt. The wife looked at the guest - it turns out that he has a wolf's head (the wolf is the mythical ancestor of the Uighurs.— S. Ts.). The owner didn't notice. After the guest had eaten, the wife told the people of the tribe. Together they chased after him, reached Mount Yudugun. We saw two people there. They said, “We are spirits. Seyanto will be destroyed”… And now the seedyanto are really defeated under this mountain.”
Subsequently, the word "Kypchak" was subjected to further rethinking. This process was associated with a new growth in the political significance of the Turks - "Kipchaks". Having retreated to the south of Western Siberia, they found themselves in the vicinity of the Kimaks *, together with whom, after the death of the Uighur Khaganate (which fell around 840 under the blows of the Yenisei Kirghiz), they created the Kimak Khaganate - a state formation based on the domination of nomads over the local settled population. Approximately at the same time, when the "Kipchaks" again become part of the ruling elite, the semantics of their tribal nickname also changes. Now they began to bring it closer to the Turkic word "kabuk" / "kavuk" - "empty, hollow tree" **. To explain the new etymology of the pseudo-ethnonym (completely unfounded from a scientific point of view), a corresponding genealogical legend was invented. It is curious that later it penetrated even into the epic of the Uighurs, who forgot the original meaning of the nickname "Kypchak". According to the Oghuz legend, narrated in detail by Rashid ad-Din (1247-1318) and Abu-l-Ghazi (1603-1663), Oghuz Khan, the legendary progenitor of the Oghuz, including the Uighurs, “was defeated by of the It-Barak tribe, with whom he fought... At that time, a certain pregnant woman, her husband who was killed in the war, climbed into the hollow of a large tree and gave birth to a child... He became in the position of the child of Oguz; the latter called him Kypchak. This word is derived from the word Kobuk, which in Turkic means "a tree with a rotten core." Abu-l-Gazi also notes: “In the ancient Turkic language, a hollow tree is called “kypchak”. All Kypchaks descend from this boy.” Another version of the legend is given by Muhammad Khaidar (c. 1499-1551) in his Oguz-name: “And then Oguz-kagan came with an army to the river called Itil (Volga). Itil is a big river. Oguz-kagan saw her and said: “How can we cross the Itil stream?” There was one burly bek in the army. His name was Ulug Ordu bey... This bek cut down trees... On those trees he settled down and crossed. Oguz-kagan was delighted and said: Oh, be a bek here, be a Kypchak-bek! Not later than the second half of the ninth century. this pseudo-ethnonym was borrowed by Arab writers, firmly rooting it in their literary tradition (“Kipchaks”, as one of the divisions of the Turkic tribes, are already mentioned in the “Book of Ways and Countries” by Ibn Khordadbeh (c. 820-c. 912).
*Apparently, the "bookish" ethnonym, which Arab authors applied to a group of tribes of Mongolian origin, at the end of the 8th - beginning of the 9th centuries. settled within the borders of the middle reaches of the Irtysh and adjacent regions from the south. Separate hordes of Kimaks wintered on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and in "Shah-name" it is even called the Kimak Sea.
** The image of a tree plays a significant role in the mythology of nomads. Sometimes they even talk about the "obsession" of the Turks with the idea of a tree (The traditional worldview of the Turks of Southern Siberia. Sign and ritual. Novosibirsk, 1990
, from. 43). Some Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia bear the name of some tree with which they associate themselves. The tree as a family sanctuary was also revered in Central Asia among the Uzbeks of the Kangly tribe.
At the beginning of the XI century. the invasion of the Khitans (or Kara-Kytays, immigrants from Mongolia) forced the Kimak-"Kypchak" tribes to leave their homes. Their resettlement went in two directions: south - to the Syr Darya, to the northern borders of Khorezm, and west - to the Volga region. In the first migration flow, the “Kipchak” element prevailed, in the second, the Kimak element. As a result, the term "Kypchak", commonly used in the Arab world, did not become widespread in Byzantium, Western Europe and Russia, where the newcomers were mainly called "Kumans" and "Polovtsy".
The origin of the name "Kuman" is quite convincingly revealed through its phonetic parallel in the form of the word "Kuban" (the Turkic languages are characterized by the alternation of "m" and "b"), which, in turn, goes back to the adjective "cube", denoting pale yellow color. Among the ancient Turks, the color semantics of the name of the tribe often correlated with its geographical location. Yellow color in this tradition could symbolize the western direction. Thus, the pseudo-ethnonym "Kumans" / "Kubans" adopted by the Byzantines and Western Europeans, apparently, was in circulation among the Kimak-"Kypchak" tribes to designate their western grouping, which in the second half of the 11th-early 12th centuries. occupied the steppes between the Dnieper and the Volga. This, of course, does not exclude the possibility of the existence of a special tribe called "Kuban" / "Kuman" - the ancestors of the Kumandins of the Northern Altai ( Potapov L.P. From the ethnic history of the Kumandins // History, archeology and ethnography of Central Asia. M., 1968. C. 316-323; see also: www.kunstkamera.ru/siberia— official website of the Department of Siberian Ethnography of the MAE RAS ). To characterize the relationship between the ethnic terms "Kuman" and "Kypchak", it is also worth noting that in the "Kuman-Kypchak" environment itself, they were by no means synonymous. The epic of the Turkic-speaking peoples does not confuse them either. Only in the late Nogai epic poem "Forty Nogai Bogatyrs" are there such lines: "The country of the Cumans, my Kipchaks, / Let good fellows ride horses!" ( Ait deseniz, aytayym (“If you ask, I will sing…”). Cherkessk, 1971. From. 6 ). However, rather distant and no longer quite adequate ideas about the historical realities of the 13th century are most likely reproduced here.
Despite the fact that the name "Kumans" was well known in ancient Russia, here another name was assigned to them. — "polovtsy". The identity of the Polovtsians and Cumans is indicated by the chronicle expression: “Kumane rekshe Polovtsy”, that is, “Kumans called Polovtsy” (see the article “The Tale of Bygone Years” under 1096, the Laurentian Chronicle under 1185, the Ipatiev Chronicle under 1292) . V. V. Bartold believed that the "Cuman" ethnonymy penetrated into the ancient Russian chronicles from Byzantium. However, this is contradicted, for example, by the presence of "Prince Kuman" in the chronicle list of the Polovtsian khans killed during the 1103 campaign of the Russian army in the steppe.
A curious etymological confusion is associated with the word "Polovtsy", which played such an important role in historiography that it even distorted the ideas of scientists about the ethnogenesis of the "Kumans" / "Kipchaks". Its true meaning turned out to be incomprehensible to the Slavic neighbors of Russia — Poles and Czechs, who, seeing in it a derivative of the Old Slavonic "plav" — straw, translated it by the term "floaters" (Plawci / Plauci), formed from the adjective "floating" (plavi, plowy) — the West Slavic analogue of the Old Russian “sexual”, that is, yellow-white, whitish-straw. In historical literature, the explanation of the word "Polovtsian" from "sexual" was first proposed in 1875 by A. Kunik (see his note on p. 387 in the book: Dorn B. Caspian. About the campaigns of ancient Russians in Tabaristan. // Notes of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. T. 26. Book. 1. St. Petersburg, 1875 ). Since then, the opinion has been firmly rooted in science that “such names as the Polovtsy-Plavtsy ... are not ethnic, but serve only to explain the appearance of the people. The ethnonyms "Polovtsy", "Plavtsy", etc. denote pale yellow, straw yellow, — names that served to designate the hair color of this people "( Rasovsky D. A. Polovtsy // Seminarium Kondakovianum. T. VII. Prague, 1935, from. 253; of the latest researchers see, for example: Pletneva S. A. Polovtsy. M., Science, 1990, from. 35-36). It is well known that fair-haired people are indeed found among the Turks. As a result, on the pages of many historical works of the twentieth century. Polovtsy appeared in the image of "blue-eyed blondes" — descendants of the Caucasians of Central Asia and Western Siberia, who underwent in the VIII-IX centuries. Turkization. Here is just one characteristic statement: “As you know, hair pigmentation is inextricably linked with a certain eye color. Unlike the rest of the Turks, black-haired and brown-eyed, the white-skinned Polovtsians appeared in a golden halo of hair over bright blue eyes ... Such a characteristic color scheme of the Polovtsy, which aroused the admiration of contemporaries, for the historian turns out to be a kind of "genealogical evidence", helping to connect their origin with the mysterious Dinlins of Chinese chronicles (“the blond people” who lived in the 1st-2nd centuries near the northern borders of China. — S. Ts.) ... and through them — with people of the so-called "Afanasiev culture", whose burials of the III millennium BC. e. were discovered by archaeologists in the Baikal region. Thus, in the ocean of time, the Polovtsy appear before us as the descendants of the most ancient Europeans, ousted from East and Central Asia by the once widespread expansion of the Mongoloid peoples. “Turkified” once “Dinlins”, they lost their ancient homeland, changed their language and the general Turkic stream brought them to the expanse of the Black Sea steppes ... already the last remnants of the once strong and numerous, and now dying out and losing their appearance among others, the golden-haired people, already marked by signs of their Asian of the past " ( Nikitin A.L. Foundations of Russian history. M., 2001, from. 430-431).
The long-term adherence of researchers to this view of the origin of the Polovtsy causes only bewilderment. Don't know what to be surprised more — the enacted fantasy of historians who set off in all serious ways, not only without even indirect evidence of the Caucasoid appearance of the Polovtsy — neighbors of Russia, but also contrary to all anthropological and ethnographic data, unequivocally confirming their belonging to the Mongoloid race, or the illegibility of linguists, who, it would seem, could know that in the case of the origin of the words "Polovtsy", "Polovtsy" from "sexual" stress in they would certainly have had the last syllable (as in the words "Solovets", "Solovtsy" — derivatives of "solovy").
Meanwhile, after detailed research by E. Ch. Skrzhinskaya ( Skrzhinskaya E. Ch. Polovtsy. Experience of the historical study of ethnikon. // Byzantine time book. 1986. T. 46, pp. 255-276; Skrzhinskaya E. Ch. Russia, Italy and Byzantium in the Middle Ages. SPb., 2000, from. 38-87) the question of the origin and original meaning of the ancient Russian name "Polovtsy" can be considered finally resolved. The researcher drew attention to a characteristic feature of the geographical representations of the Kiev chroniclers of the 11th-12th centuries, namely, their stable division of the territory of the Middle Dnieper into two sides: “this”, “this” (that is, “this”, or “Russian”, which lay like and Kyiv, on the western bank of the Dnieper) and “on” (“that”, or “Polovtsian”, stretching east from the Dnieper right bank to the Volga itself *). The latter was also designated as “he is the floor”, “this floor” (“one side”, “that side”)**. From here it became clear that “the word“ Polovtsian ”is formed according to the habitat of nomads - like another word — “tozemets” (inhabitant of “that land”)”, because “for the Russian people, the Polovtsy were inhabitants of that (“that”), alien side of the Dnieper (about him half = Polovtsy) and in this capacity differed from “their filthy”, black hoods who lived on this ("this"), their side of the river. In this opposition, a specific Russian ethnicon “they floorboards” ***, or simply “floorboards”, was born, which was transformed in the process of development of the Old Russian language into “Polovtsi” ( Skrzhinskaya. Russia, Italy, p. 81, 87). It is quite natural that outside the framework of this geographical tradition, the peculiar South Russian term turned out to be inaccessible to understanding, as a result of which it was misinterpreted not only by Western Slavs, but even by educated people of Muscovite Russia. The latest etymologies of the word "Polovtsy", common among Moscow scribes of the late 15th-early 16th century, can be judged from the surviving news of foreign writers. So, the Polish scientist and historian Matvey Mekhovsky heard that “the Polovtsy in Russian means “hunters” or “robbers”, since they often raided the Russians, plundered their property, as the Tatars do in our time” ( "Tractatus diabus Sarmatiis, Asiana et Europiana", 1517). Consequently, his informant was based on the old Russian "fishing" — hunting. And according to Sigismund Herberstein, the ambassador of the Austrian emperor at the court of Grand Duke Vasily III, Muscovites of that time produced the word "Polovtsy" from "field". It should be added that neither then, nor earlier, in the pre-Mongol era, did the Russian people mix the adjective "sexual" here.
* Wed. with the chronicle: “the whole Polovtsian land, what (is.—
S. Ts.) between the Volga and the Dnieper.
** "Hearing the same Svyatopolk going Yaroslav, attach a beschic howl, Rus and Pecheneg, and went against him to Lyubich on the floor of the Dnieper, and Yaroslav [stood] on this [side]" (article under 1015).
*** In the Kiev Chronicle under 1172, it is said that Prince Gleb Yuryevich "went to one side [of the Dnieper] to one Polovtsy." The Dictionary of M. Fasmer also fixes the concept of "Onopolets, Onopolovets" - living on the other side of the river, derived from the Church Slavonic "about his gender" (Fasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language. M., 1971. T.
3, p. 142).
The complete ignorance of the "Kipchaks" by ancient Russian literature indicates that in Russia initially and throughout the entire "Polovtsian" period of relations with the steppe, they dealt exclusively with the Kimak (Kuman) group of Polovtsy. In this regard, the “Polovtsy Yemyakove” mentioned in the annals are indicative. The Yemeks were one of the dominant tribes in the Kimak tribal union.
To be continued
The Polovtsians are one of the most mysterious steppe peoples, which entered Russian history thanks to raids on principalities and repeated attempts by the rulers of Russian lands, if not to defeat the steppe people, then at least to negotiate with them.
The Polovtsy themselves were defeated by the Mongols and settled over a significant part of the territory of Europe and Asia. Now there is no people who could directly trace their ancestry to the Polovtsians. And yet they certainly have descendants.
Polovtsy. Nicholas Roerich
In the steppe (Dashti-Kipchak - Kipchak, or Polovtsian steppe) lived not only the Polovtsy, but also other peoples, who are either united with the Polovtsians, or considered independent: for example, the Cumans and Kuns. Most likely, the Polovtsians were not a "monolithic" ethnic group, but were divided into tribes. Arab historians of the early Middle Ages distinguish 11 tribes, Russian chronicles also indicate that different tribes of the Polovtsy lived west and east of the Dnieper, east of the Volga, near the Seversky Donets.
Location map of nomadic tribes Many Russian princes were descendants of the Polovtsians - their fathers often married noble Polovtsian girls. Not so long ago, a dispute broke out about how Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky actually looked.
It is known that the prince's mother was a Polovtsian princess, so it is not surprising that according to the reconstruction of Mikhail Gerasimov, Mongoloid features were combined with Caucasoid ones in his appearance.
What Andrey Bogolyubsky looked like: reconstruction by V.N. Zvyagin (left) and M.M. Gerasimov (right)
What did the Polovtsy themselves look like?
Khan of the Polovtsians (reconstruction)
There is no consensus among researchers on this matter. In the sources of the XI-XII centuries, the Polovtsians are often called "yellow". The Russian word also probably comes from the word "sexual", that is, yellow, straw.
Some historians believe that among the ancestors of the Polovtsy were the “Dinlins” described by the Chinese: people who lived in Southern Siberia and were blondes. But the authoritative researcher of the Polovtsy Svetlana Pletneva, who has repeatedly worked with materials from the mounds, does not agree with the hypothesis of the "fairness" of the Polovtsian ethnos. “Yellow” can be a self-name of a part of the nationality in order to distinguish itself, to oppose the rest (in the same period there were, for example, “black” Bulgarians).
Polovtsian camp
According to Pletneva, the bulk of the Polovtsians were brown-eyed and dark-haired - these are Turks with an admixture of Mongoloidness. It is quite possible that among them were people of different types of appearance - the Polovtsians willingly took Slav women as wives and concubines, though not of princely families. The princes never gave their daughters and sisters to the steppes.
In the Polovtsian pastures there were also Russians who were captured in battle, as well as slaves.
